


let me let you down

by crookedsaint



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: 12x100, Character Study, Constrained Writing, F/F, Found Family, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29314074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedsaint/pseuds/crookedsaint
Summary: Kennedy Loser kills god. This is not the end of his story.(Twelve 100 word scenes about two revolutionaries, the family they build, and confidence.)
Relationships: Kennedy Loser & The Baltimore Crabs, Kennedy Loser/Finn James
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	let me let you down

**Author's Note:**

> format from lewis attilio's real baseball short stories, on medium as @pigeonize
> 
> title from let me let you down by chewing on tinfoil
> 
> kennedy is a butch lesbian and uses he/him pronouns <3

**1.**

They meet a hundred times, a hundred ways, in a hundred lives. In this one, he’s a teenager in his father’s clothes, propped up against the first bar he’s ever laid a hand on. He feels older than he is when she looks at him, and the two of them don’t yet know how young they really are. The red-blue-green-pink-green-red-blue lights flash against her face, and when he asks her name, his voice doesn’t waver. He’s never been more sure of anything than he is of this.

Sureness leads, as sureness does, to mistakes he’d never dream of taking back.

**2.**

Rehoboth is part of both of them. They’ve been here before, whizzing past each other in their childhood memories like a pair of comets. This time, though, they’re side by side, piecing their pasts together into a puzzle bigger than either of them.

Finn James’ hand brushes his, and he isn’t worthy. They’re sticky with the sugar from a saltwater taffy wrapper. She smiles at him, their eyes’ chance meeting the only reason he can pretend it’s intentional. He worries (like he always does) that it’s all some cosmic mistake.

Finn James’ lips brush his, and he isn’t worried anymore.

**3.**

Baltimore is something different—something sharper, saltier. Her cheek is wet with tears and her head is heavy where it’s pressed into his chest. The waters of the harbor churn with life too vivid for anything else to exist alongside it. They know that, in the morning, it will run red.

“I love this city. I don’t want to see it die.”

He runs his fingers through her hair, rough as it is with sea-spray. “We’re not killing Baltimore.”

“We’re killing something.”

He can’t justify what he’s about to do. Not when his could-have-been-fiancee is there, shaking like a wind-torn flag.

**4.**

Kennedy Loser stands in front of a mirror dressed for battle. He swallows as if he’s on his way to prom. The half-improvised weapons, the overstuffed first aid kits, the contents of his pockets—they are no sick comfort to him.

Finn lays a hand on his shoulder (still sandy-brown, still warm, dry) and lays a kiss on his cheek. “Today’s the day.”

“I wish we had more time.”

“We will. After.”

He clings to her words, once he cannot cling to her. Once the heat of battle tears her from his side and drags her deeper than he can follow.

**5.**

The first three days without her go unspoken. 

The next three days are screamed from every dock clear enough of viscera for him to reach the edge. Kennedy is warned not to swim. Kennedy isn’t worried anymore, and this is a dangerous thing. He has tasted the blood of his mother and he is hungry for more.

There is only so long one woman can scream his throat raw. When the blood becomes more his than hers, there are hands that pull him from the edge. Dry his clothes. Lay him to rest.

None of them are the right ones.

**6.**

The house is full of her. Her instant photographs. Her jars of sea glass. Her now-wilted bouquets.

It’s not his idea to keep going. Keep killing. It should have been, really, because he’s the one who presses on. The one who stays strong despite everything. No, it’s Combs’, so Combs is captain, and when Combs asks him to try strength again, it’s an order.

They also ask, once the only ones left in the kitchen under the dull lamplight are Sutton and Pedro, what he needs to do it. 

He moves in above the bookstore with Sutton the next day.

**7.**

The next time he opens the door to the townhouse, it’s to another world entirely.

In this one, he’s a captain in the frail body of an old friend, cheeks streaked in ash and tears and leaning too-heavy on Finn. She’s different now—but then, so is he. What difference is there between her too-big teeth and his too-big jaw? Between her lantern and his still-singed antennae? Her clammy hands and his feverish forehead?

She runs a hand over his sweat-spiked hair as he sobs into her lap. He should be strong, now, for her. But Combs isn’t here to ask.

**8.**

Nagomi and Axel were one thing. The team needs consoling, their families need contacting. These are all things a captain does.

When Tillman goes up in smoke, the townhouse is filled to the brim with half-ironic celebration and half-ironic mourning. Liquor flows freely and harsh words even moreso, and, while Kennedy-the-captain knows he should be making speeches and standing stable for the grieving, Kennedy-the-scared-teenager’s gaze lands on the girl perched on his kitchen counter, several star charts laid out before her.

“A fortune-teller?”

“What’s it to you?”

He reaches into his pocket and draws a card. “The Tower. Well, then.”

**9.**

This may be the day Combs dreamed of.

Kennedy wishes he’d dreamed of it, too. He wishes he had some kind of plan, some grand design he could draw out on a whiteboard and explain to the team line by line. Instead, all he can do is sit knee-to-knee with Silvaire, praying to whatever scorned god might still listen to a god-killer that the next card he draws isn’t a Tower.

It’s not that he tells Tosser to back off—nothing a captain might say. But Kennedy hesitates, barely, and Tosser knows him a little too well to play their best.

**10.**

_ Shame _ is the right word for what burns in Kennedy’s chest. Finn tries (because she always does) to pry him out of the townhouse and into Baltimore. It is, in many ways, the same Baltimore they used to haunt.

But Kennedy is well past Baltimore. He has seen god and heard its bitter laugh. He has stood and watched from the dugout as Axel’s sister tried and failed to do what only the Crabs had ever accomplished.

“It should have been me,” he whispers, and Finn has heard it before. She turns the lights out and kisses his god-touched jaw.

**11.**

He orders the other Crabs to spend what could be their last night with the people they love the most. Yet, after the bottle is drained and the dishes are washed, they remain. 

“This is it, isn’t it?” Pedro leans into Kennedy’s shoulder, Val’s absence the only thing between them.

“Hope so,” Sutton says. She’s draped over Nagomi, who frowns.

“Last time you pulled this, did you lose anyone?”

Finn presses her face into his neck. Her pulse flutters against his.

“This time,” Kennedy says, with all the confidence in the world, “it’ll be different. We’ll be together. I promise.”

**12.**

This is not a god that simmers and roils with life.

This god is already dead. It stinks of rot, of ancient sin and novel cruelty, of something so beyond Kennedy Loser, numbers on a screen, a signature on a page, a woman finally looking his purpose in the eye.

**YOU BELIEVE YOU ARE WORTHY** , it declares, and he’s sure that it’s wrong. He spares a glance at his family, at Finn under his arm, at Sutton with her teeth bared, at Brock and Tosser huddled together, at Forrest and Pedro and Parker and Monty and—

He’s sure it’s wrong.


End file.
